because you don’t know shit about what you’re cramming down your booze hole

It seems only fair that my first post be a wine that I’ve never had before. Surely this won’t be a recipe for failure!

Hold on a minute, I have to go get the wine key.

PSYCH!

This 2006 Adelsheim Pinot Gris is a twist-top, which has become an industry standard for wines from New Zealand and other new(ish) world producers. Oregon, it seems, has been under its own guise since the early 1960s, and is more than content continuing to do things just how it prefers to do them.

Now, it could be because this wine was purchased on the “CLOSEOUT, ABSOLUTELY MUST GO!” shelf of the local liquor store that it, at first, had a nose of “I can’t believe it’s not butter” and cooked pear. However, with a little time and a few swirls, the faux-butter settled down and the true fruit began to come through. Being that this particular winery will induce malolactic fermentation in certain lots of wine that end up being used in the final blend, and an even smaller portion is actually aged in older (read: mostly neutral) oak barrels, the soft oak characteristics will be present, but not overbearing. After a few sips, the pear characteristic comes out of its shell, followed by a nice apple finish. The diacetyl aspects settle down a bit too, which means (thankfully) instead of pears cooked in Country Crock, you get a nice fresh fruit flavor of crisp pear and apple with just a touch of butterscotch which in its own way can be reminiscent of applesauce or even caramel apples.

All in all, this wine is one of the very few examples I have seen thusfar that shows a delicate (and in this writer’s view, appropriate) amount of oak in a new world white wine.

Perhaps when I win the lottery or start feeding greyhounds steroids in their Kibbles ‘n Bits, I will do a summary of Oregon Pinot Noirs.